Cause and Effect
by Fair-Ithil
Summary: He makes the voices go away. And the darkness is not so unbearable then...PostBDM, Rayne


**Disclaimer: Let's see how does that rhyme go? Joss is Boss.**

**A/N: **If there's anything I like more than** CRI (Crazy River Imagery) **it's** Rayne. River PoV, Post-BDM, **aforementioned **CRI,** and** Rayne.** Read, enjoy, let me know what you think.

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It's too dark.

And like the nighttime terrors her parents never warned her of, they come, creeping and crawling out of their day time hiding holes and parade behind her eyes. Whispers that snare in the tresses of her hair and curl like rope around her wrist; hold her down even as the dark swallows her.

They twitter away and she grows tired, eyes sagging even as they insist on play. "Can't see." She tells them, hoping they will understand and leave her be. They don't.

The voices continue, go on their merry as Daddy might say, and her arms itch with the urge to reach out and grab them, but they are slippery, these voices that are not hers and they evade her curled fingers with all the ease of a dancer.

She wishes to put them away now, store them beneath lock and key the way all the others do with their own demons, neat like on a high shelf where they'll never come down but its too dark and she cannot see. The voices elude her.

Everything is heavy here, in this black that is doubly dark, hidden alone beneath blankets of shadow and cotton that threaten to smother her. The voices drop like lead into the wells of her being and she chokes as they roll down her throat.

She can't breathe.

It's too dark.

-

He makes the voices go away.

She learned this not long after coming to _Serenity_, finding peace in his shadow that even Simon's drugs could not offer. But that was before Ariel, before Guilt and Shame that wound knots in her stomach and made her heart hurt more than the back of his hand across her face ever did. He was no good to her then, the cool shade he once offered lost to the regret he harbored.

So she had threatened him, made sure Simon would threaten him too. She was a Reader after all, though it didn't take a one to know that Jayne Cobb was never the sort of man who would take kindly to be threatened.

It worked.

But Respect made for a better home, or so she had learned following Miranda. So it is now, in the darkness that she slips once more into his bunk, breathing in the scent of sweat and gun polish and him. He wakes before she hits the bottom and by the time she reaches his bed, he is sitting.

"What's it now girl?" His voice is rough with sleep and habit and she settles in besides him.

"They don't let me sleep." She says easily enough, leaning into the rough hand that comes to rest on her cheek.

"They don't?" He asks and even in the dark she knows he is putting on his serious face. "Y'all shut the hell up now, _dong ma_?" He says to the voices in her head with all the sharpness he used to store for her.

She smiles and they listen, going quiet as they scatter beneath rocks and shadows, around the bends inside her mind. She breathes out, eyes slipping shut as the quiet takes it proper place inside her head.

She feels his breath across her brow, warm-wet, laced with whiskey and she knows he's going to kiss her before he's even sure of it himself. She like this, likes him—more than shadow-shelter or quiet, he is warmth in the deep black that surrounds and she allows herself to be absorbed by the heat of him. Better than Simon's drugs that leave her in the waking fog of sleep, he is solid.

With her eyes closed she sees him, swirls of color in the darkness, cobalt and grey and purple, all the shades of a bruise dancing across her eyes so bright she is forces to blink, open her eyes away from them, almost wanting to share with him the truth, whisper that he's brighter than a firefly in July, but she doesn't. Wants a secret, something to fill the crater left by Miranda, and the brilliance of his light seems to fill it nicely.

She reaches out now, fingers walking the strong line of his arm, the set of his shoulder, she feels the steady 'pulse-pulse' of his throat against her fingers and the sternness of his jaw.

"They quiet?" he asks as she traces his mouth, fluttering finger tips that feel his grin even as his voice is decisively gruff.

"Yes." She answers, with a nod. "Her head is quiet."

He makes the voices go away.

And the darkness is not so unbearable then.

**End**

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